Hillary Clinton in 2013

Family Fraud Initiative busts 238 fake family units at border.

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 6:15 PM PST – Fri. October 18, 2019

ICE Customs and Border Patrol have released the results of an April program that sought to identify fraudulent family units at the El Paso border. A Thursday report broke down the findings of the so called “Family Fraud Initiative.”
Reportedly 238 fraudulent families were identified at the border and 50 adults claimed to be unaccompanied minors. More than 350 individuals are facing federal prosecution for crimes including human smuggling, making false statements and illegal reentry.
Reports also said the initiative identified a massive child smuggling operation. Parents have entered into agreements to hand their children over to unrelated adults to falsely pose as a family unit.
This comes a handful of days after a British family was deported by U.S. immigration officials for crossing “accidentally” from Canada into the United States. The family was detained for two weeks and claimed they simply turned down the wrong road. Border Patrol issued a statement that said the family was driving “slowly and deliberately” through the border crossing. They have since pointed out other inconsistencies in the family’s statement and other implicating details in immigration records.
“During processing, record checks revealed two of the adults were previously denied travel authorization to come to the United States,” read the statement.
ICE has said they hope the Family Fraud Initiative will continue to stop these various crimes along all borders of the United States.
https://www.oann.com/family-fraud-initiative-busts-238-fake-family-units-at-border/

Snit Romney

written by Kurt Schlicter for Townhall

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall

I want my vote back, Mitt. Give me back my vote.

In 2012, I voted for this insufferable establishment icon, this inept goof who the Democrats wish every Republican would emulate. Some nights, I wake up sweating and screaming when I relive it in my nightmares. I should have taken my ballot, lit it on fire and flushed it down the Schiffhole.

But Romney does serve a purpose, as hard as that is to see through his pathetic antics. His perpetual groveling for approval – including, hilariously, from Donald Trump himself who just broke him right in front of our eyes over the Secretary of State gig – is so shameful and cringe-iliciously embarrassing that it obscures the vital role this shiny doofus can play for conservatism.

He’s a perfect conservative cautionary example. 

This is Mitt. 

Mitt’s a loser. 

Don’t be like Mitt.

Let’s review the storied resume of Willard “Mitt” Romney as a way to understand exactly why he is political strychnine to the conservative movement. If a council of learned scholars sought to create the most utterly hateable, totally unrelatable caricature of what a Republican is, their final product would be this Jeb!-like golem.

Mitt started off the son of a rich guy, which is fine, but he did not go to Vietnam because he was in France on a mission for the Mormon church. His being a Mormon is literally the only good thing about him. His being healthy and not going to ‘Nam, even as today he talks a big game about staying in Syria forever because…well, because it would never occur to Mitt to take a position the folks at the country club don’t share, is a bad look. 

I sort of hate the whole “chickenhawk” thing. Every citizen has a right to opine on the question of war and peace, DD 214 or no. There are lots of good reasons people have for not serving, and my own service was pretty much just showing up, but it’s super hard to take our ruling caste – of which Mitt is a charter member – writing checks that get cashed in our kids’ blood when they have no kin in the game. That’s especially true when out of Mitt’s 47 spawn, we will never see his sons Tagg, Tugg, Zippy, Miff, Mork, Dingus, Tugg II, or Spork rucking-up to head over to Northern Syria to fight Turkey over this esoteric border dispute. 

The same day he was on the Senate floor fronting about “honor” and “betrayal” there was a civil war breaking out in Mexico, yet Mitt couldn’t spare a second to fight to secure our own border. Every year, our open border literally kills thousands of Americans, via criminals and fentanyl. That’s what we’re interested in, not refereeing between tribes on the other side of the globe. But the folks who really matter to Mitt, his fat cat elite pals, decreed that we just have to accept the open borders butcher’s bill because they need the serf labor and new voters, so Mitt’s right there championing the Kurds instead of you and your family.

I oppose Turkey and generally like the Kurds, but I like Americans better, and so should our Republican politicians.

Beyond his class solidarity, Mitt’s loyalty is to Mitt and the glory that he believes should come from his blazing Mittness. He started in Michigan, then was governor in Massachusetts, then ran for president, then thought about running for Senate from New Hampshire, then moved to rich guy central in La Jolla, then ran for Senate in Utah. He’s the establishment equivalent of the cheesy strippers who you see on Southwest flights from LAX to Vegas every Friday night, with little carry-bags for their g-strings. Except they have the self-respect that comes with knowing they didn’t earn their dollars shipping American jobs to Szechuan.

His political loyalty is similarly tightly focused through the lens of Mitt. This is the guy who imposed the precursor of Obamacare on Massachusetts, which, in fairness, deserved it. He pretended to be conservative when he was trying to get us to elect him president and now, when we actually have a conservative Republican president doing conservative things, he’s siding with the Democrats because that Republican president is not him.

Of course, Mitt will vote to convict when the impeachment idiocy heads over to the Senate. He couldn’t pass up the pats on his impeccably coiffed head that would come from the very same liberal establishment that pummeled him as a cancer-causing, dog torturing bigot. Of course, this claim was unfair – he probably never caused cancer. But that whole dog on the roof thing was super weird, and I can’t forget the utter lack of character he showed by firing the great (now Ambassador) Ric Grenell from his campaign when some people realized Ric was gay. Mitt tossed a friend away because he was scared that his friend would be a liability – what do you think he would do to us Normals and our interests the second the elite put pressure on him?

Well, we know. He’s doing it right now. He’s John Kasich with a job and a dad who was most definitely not a postman.

It’s his weakness that really grates, the pseudo-gentlemanly submissiveness to the abuse of the elite we saw for far too long among our alleged True Conservative™ betters. We’ve learned that “being the bigger man” and not fighting back were not some sort of higher principle being put into action but were, rather, the manifestation of the weakness inherent in the conservatives of the cruise ship class. Candy Crowley humiliated him in front of the entire country and he just took it. Well, we’re sick of just taking it. He and his human puffball ilk are why we said “Ahoy” to Donald Trump. 

This is what makes Mitt mad – not the depredations of the left but his rejection by the people like us, who he sucked up to in 2008 and 2012, after it became obvious what a fraud he is.

Hey Mitt, I want my vote back.

Nancy Pelosi and the Gullible Resistance

Lying to the Resistance is easy when they’re too desperate and stupid to know or care that they’re being lied to.

Patriot Retort

There is no official impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives.  Now, if you’re a member of the gullible Resistance^LOL, that probably comes as a surprise to you.

Actually, if you’re a member of the gullible Resistance^LOL, you probably read that sentence and immediately shouted, “That’s a LIE!  You Rightwing Trumpkins!  All you do is lie!  The President is going down! The walls are closing in!  He’s on borrowed time!  And you racist, gap-toothed garbage people should just cry some more!!!!” Then you’d stomp away in a huff and light the Schiff Prayer Candle you have on your Resistance Shrine.

But that doesn’t change the fact that there is no official impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives.

As Mark Levin has pointed out, in order for there to be an actual official impeachment inquiry, the entire House would have to vote on it.  Nancy alone cannot open an “official” impeachment inquiry.

Impeachment is the responsibility of the entire House, not Nancy and her sock puppet Adam Schiff.

But Nancy is banking on the fact that the gullible Resistance^LOL doesn’t know that – or doesn’t care.

She knows she can lie to them and they will believe her lies uncritically.

For example, this pile of excrement Nancy tweeted out yesterday:

Let’s put aside for a moment Nancy asking “if they have nothing to hide.” We’ll deal with that later.

Notice she says the Trump Administration is “defying lawful subpoenas.”

That’s a lie.

There are no “lawful subpoenas.”  These letters demanding documents are not subpoenas at all.

If the House would actually vote to open an impeachment inquiry, then they would have the power to issue subpoenas — defiance of which would result in legal consequences.

But there is no official impeachment inquiry.  So the Administration is not under any obligation to turn over anything.

Now let’s look at the pure hypocrisy of Nancy’s tweet.

“If they have nothing to hide, why not comply? #TruthExposed”

This coming from the Speaker of the House who is conducting this so-called “impeachment inquiry” behind closed doors – not permitting transcripts of testimony to be released to the public and not permitting Republicans to call witnesses or, in some cases, even attend.

If Nancy had nothing to hide, she would hold these hearings in full view of the American people, allow Republicans to participate, and permit the White House access to the transcripts.

If Nancy had nothing to hide, she would call a full House vote to formally open an impeachment inquiry.

Truth exposed?

Is she kidding?

But here’s the thing.  The gullible Resistance^LOL just wants the President impeached.  And

Nancy knows they will swallow every dishonest claim she makes unquestioningly.

Hell, she’s counting on it.

The jibbering Resistance^LOL will clap back, “Oh yeah?! It’s just like a Grand Jury!!” Not because they know what they’re talking about. But because some talking head on CNN said it, therefore it must be true.

But it isn’t true.

As Andy McCarthy pointed out the other day in the New York Post:

Yet, the House should vote on conducting an impeachment inquiry. It should conduct related hearings in public — since it is not conducting a grand-jury investigation but an exercise in political accountability.

The fact is, the Democrats aren’t conducting an “impeachment inquiry.”  Instead, they are conducting a public relations push.

Nancy and Schiff, with a heavy assist from the news media, are trying to sway public opinion away from President Trump and toward impeachment.

That’s why they are holding their kangaroo court behind closed doors where they can carefully, selectively leak details to the media which the media can then amplify as “the walls are closing in.”

The goal is to sow the seeds of doubt and suspicion against President Trump.

Then the media conducts skewed impeachment polls heavily weighing the polls with Democrat voters to give the impression that public opinion is turning toward impeachment.

In other words, they are utilizing “polling” as a way to influence, not measure, public sentiment.

This is the exact same strategy the Democrats and their media handmaids used in 2016.

As I said almost three years ago in my column “Vote:”

The goal of the Enslaved Press and opinion polling is to create an air of inevitability around Hillary Clinton. Their hope is to dispirit you – to leave you feeling as if your vote will make no difference.

They want you to give up and stay home in November. Because that’s the only way Hillary Clinton can win.

But they’ve miscalculated. Their ability to sway you into staying home in defeat rests solely in how much voters trust what the Enslaved Press says.

And we don’t trust them anymore.

Well, they’re doing it again, this time with impeachment.

The goal is the same: dispirit voters, influence the 2020 election and sow as much chaos as possible to get the American people to throw up their hands and yell, “Enough!”

The Democrats and the media are using the impeachment process as a campaign tool.  Or, as Andy McCarthy put it yesterday at National Review, this is the trivialization of impeachment.

While most of us no longer believe the Democrat media complex, the gullible Resistance^LOL does.  More specifically, the Resistance^LOL needs to believe them.

And when you have spent more than a generation dumbing down the American people to the point where they are completely ignorant of our Constitution and the Separation of Powers – not to mention civics and history in general – they can be easily hoodwinked by cynical, power-hungry charlatans like Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and their media handmaids.

Nancy knows the White House is under no obligation to comply with this phony impeachment.  She knows there can be no legal consequences for ignoring their letters demanding information.  And she knows it has absolutely nothing to do with the White House having something to hide.

But she is confident her reckless rhetoric will be credulously believed by the desperate, gullible Resistance^LOL.

For them, impeachment isn’t about facts or the truth; impeachment is nothing but wishcasting.

And they see Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff as the ones who will make their wishes come true. 

How I Could Take Climate Change Serious.

Liberals are still parading Greta Thunberg around America demanding we do whatever it takes to make her future what she wants it to be.

Extinction Rebellion is protesting by blocking highways, Tubes, streets and such in defense of Climate Change action.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says we only have 12 years before we all die.

Children in schools are showing high levels of Climate Change anxiety.

So, We Must Do Something! Right?

But, until Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Austin, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Washington DC, Falls Church, Richmond, Baltimore, and New York City commit to the following:
1.Outlaw all fossil fueled vehicles. 2. Cut all power generation from fossil fueled sources. 3. Cut water supply from sources powered by fossil fuel sources. 4. Required all businesses within city proper stop serving meat and vegetables supplied by sources which use fossil power. 5. Required all families within their city proper be restricted to one child and begin forced sterilizations.
6. Close all Airports.
7. Refuse to use any airplane not powered by Solar power.
8. Determine which of their children will be Post Aborted so that they only have 1 child.
9. Refuse to buy any product made from petroleum based sources.
10. Refuse to use any entertainment from anyone who refuses to honor 1-9.
Until as a minimum these 10 things are implemented immediately within the Liberal controlled cities I can not be too concerned about Climate Change.
After all how can I follow a leader and its movement if the leaders themselves won't show me they are serious?

Hillary Clinton Chickens Out on Appearing at Same Event as Tulsi Gabbard

David Harris Jr & Daily Caller

Hillary Clinton has canceled a speaking engagement in Washington, D.C. at the 2019 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. She amazingly remembered a prior engagement right after it was revealed that Gabbard would also be speaking there. Look out, Hillary. Your cowardice is showing. A source close to Clinton claims Hillary canceled because Kirstjen Nielsen, the former secretary of homeland security, is also scheduled to speak at the event. I’m not buying that story or the Brooklyn Bridge. Clinton and Gabbard traded nastygrams this week, with Clinton claiming that Gabbard was a Russian asset. But, who was it that collected $145 million dollars after the sale of Uranium One to Russia?

From The Daily Caller

Hillary Clinton was set to speak in Washington, D.C. at the 2019 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, but it appears that her plans have changed.

Clinton cited a scheduling conflict as her reasoning for the drop out. 

However, a source close to the Clinton’s told Slate that the decision to cancel was made because Kirstjen Nielsen, the former secretary of homeland security, is also scheduled to speak at the event.

Coincidentally, one of the other speakers attending the summit is 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard.

This news broke after Clinton and Gabbard’s heated battle on Friday. Clinton suggested that Gabbard was being groomed by a foreign government for her presidential bid, referring to her as a “favorite of the Russians.”

Following Hillary’s comments, Tulsi unleashed on Twitter, calling Clinton “the embodiment of corruption and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.”

In her statement, Gabbard also urged the former first lady to join the 2020 race.

No, the Biden-Ukraine story is not a ‘conspiracy theory’

Matthew Boose for American Greatness

Anyone who thinks it’s weird that Hunter Biden got a $600,000 a year sinecure in a notoriously corrupt country when his father was the former president’s point man for that country is now said to be a “conspiracy theorist.”

That’s the story being told by the “fact-checkers” in the corporate leftist press. As they would have it, President Trump’s allegations of corruption against Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son are absolutely baseless. Of course, it’s an altogether different story for Trump, against whom the slightest innuendo of irregularity is taken as evidence of wrongdoing and allegations must always be true.

It is, of course, passé to point out this double standard, but it really can’t be repeated enough, particularly as the media goes into overdrive to run interference on the Biden scandal.

Dismissive Denials

A recent story in the New Yorker on the “conspiracy theory” positions itself as the last word on the matter. It’s an exemplar in a certain journalistic style of presumption—a style that has become very common in the era of Trump and breathless, self-righteous “fact-checking.” Author Jane Mayer traces the story from its origins in the fringes of the Breitbart-verse, through its infection of respected, totally conspiracy-free newspapers, such as the New York Times.

The story bears the headline, “The Invention of the Conspiracy Theory on Biden and Ukraine”—an extraordinarily definitive title for a piece in which the supporting evidence is slight.

Mayer doesn’t challenge the allegations against Biden so much as airily dismiss them by pointing to that nebulous cloud, so useful, so beloved by journalists, of “the facts.” The Biden-Ukraine story, writes Mayer, is a “baseless” and “repeatedly discredited” (by whom?) conspiracy theory. The reader is instantly alerted to the pernicious workings of “conservative operatives” who have “weaponized” the story for political purposes.

As Mayer goes on to trace the story’s emergence, we encounter the same style of presumption. The success of the Biden narrative is proof of the ability of “political partisans” to influence the mainstream media (the media isn’t partisan?) and a worrisome sign of just how hard it is to fight “disinformation” these days.

Much of the article focuses not on rebutting the Biden story, but on tracing it to right-wing journalists, like John Solomon, who had been a “respected” reporter for the Washington Post—that is, until he began working for “overtly conservative outlets” like the Washington Times and fell into disrepute—and Breitbart editor Peter Schweitzer.

Schweitzer, Mayer observes, previously peddled “disinformation” about conflicts of interest involving the Clinton Foundation in 2016 in the book Clinton Cash, particularly the Uranium One story, which “enabled Clinton’s opponents to frame her as greedy and corrupt.” The New York Times, apparently forgetting its mission to combat right-wing hate-facts, credulously printed Schweitzer’s allegations.

Now, Schweitzer has peddled fresh “baseless tales” about the Bidens. But what does the story’s genealogy have to do with the truth of the actual allegations? Is Joe Biden crooked or not? Thankfully, the question has been settled easily and without much need for reflection. The “fact-checkers” have made quick work of the whole thing:

Among those officials was Viktor Shokin, a former top Ukrainian prosecutor who was sacked in March 2016, after European and U.S. officials, including Joe Biden, complained that he was lax in curbing corruption. Shokin claimed that he had lost his powerful post not because of his poor performance but rather because Biden wanted to stop his investigation of Burisma, in order to protect his son. The facts didn’t back this up. The Burisma investigation had been dormant under Shokin. (Emphasis added.)

This is almost the entirety of the rebuttal given to the corruption allegations: it’s a conspiracy theory because “the facts” said so. But “the facts” invoked here, as is so often the case in the lapdog press, are a mere substitute for factual demonstration. After invoking “the facts,” we get a series of neat, settled talking points meant to dismiss any doubts about the incontrovertible truth of the narrative.

Troublesome Facts Just Aren’t Facts

The claim being referenced here, of course, is that Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who had investigated a company, Burisma Holdings, on whose board Hunter sat. The former vice president famously bragged about getting the “son of a bitch” fired by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees.

That looks bad for Biden, and we can’t have that. Happily, the “fact checkers” have already put out the fire. Their rebuttal is a typically incurious one: Shokin was fired, not for going after Burisma, but for not pursuing corruption, and Burisma, enough. Yes, of course. The Burisma investigation was “dormant,” whatever that means, under Shokin, and there was international pressure for his firing anyway, so Biden really should be applauded for sacking him.

There is so much that has been left unsettled here. Perhaps it warrants some journalistic investigation? For one thing, the fact that Western governments and international institutions were not happy with Shokin does not exclude the possibility that Biden wanted him fired for his own reasons.

With the explosion of the Biden story into the mainstream, voters have been left in a “fog of suspicion and confusion” where it’s impossible to tell truth from fact. Suddenly it’s possible—perish the thought!—Biden may not be such an upright guy after all.

While the official story for Biden’s trip to Ukraine was that he was there to offer them help in fighting corruption and reforming the country after its revolution, at that very time his son was making a killing at a company run by an “oligarch” and former minister of ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia after the revolution. But there was absolutely no conflict between Biden’s official mission and the personal interests of his son? Really? Even the New York Times acknowledged, in a December 2015 article, that Biden’s “credibility” in fighting corruption risked being “undermined” by Hunter’s position at Burisma. You don’t say?

Hunter Biden got the job in 2014, shortly after his father became Obama’s point man for Kiev. Must have been a coincidence. The State Department said at the time that young Biden was a “private citizen” and that there was no conflict. But didn’t Hunter’s position call into question the purity of his father’s motives in pursuing the whole anti-corruption thing in Ukraine, just a tiny bit?

But the fact-checkers seem satisfied with this explanation. The famously non-corrupt State Department and EU were behind Shokin’s firing, so there’s nothing to see here. But if there was an investigation into Burisma, then Biden had a conflict of interest, period, and any media worthy of respect would have more, not fewer, questions about what happened.

Incuriosity Is Killing Our Press

The “fact-checkers” seem satisfied that there was no investigation, that it was “dormant.” But what the hell does “dormant” mean? In other words, there was an investigation, but it was suspended? What does that prove? Did Bidenknow that the investigation was dormant, or sleeping, or hibernating, or whatever it was supposed to be doing? And how do we know he did not expect it someday to resume?

Nobody has shown that the investigation was officially closed, or even “dormant.” The Ukrainians have given conflicting accounts. The “dormant” claim appears to stem from a single Bloomberg story citing Shokin’s former deputy, Vitaliy Kasko. According to Kasko, the Burisma probe was “shelved” in 2014 and 2015. (Shokin was fired in 2016.) But Shokin has said in a sworn affidavit that he was actively investigating Burisma and that he was fired because Biden wanted him gone.

According to the “fact-checkers,” the sources pushing the Biden story can’t be trusted. Solomon, who helped promote the Biden story in a series of columns for The Hill, cited what Mayer calls “questionable” sources. Those sources included Shokin himself and his successor, Yuri Lutensko. Why are Shokin and Lutsenko untrustworthy, while Kasko has the last word?

Of course, we don’t know that Biden did anything wrong, but to call it a conspiracy theory? The media haven’t dedicated a fraction of the energy they poured into the Russia collusion coup into this story, but already, they seem to have the whole thing figured out.

What’s going on here? The media isn’t doing any “fact-checking” on the Biden-Ukraine story. Rather, they are doing narrative gatekeeping. Instead of investigating plain conflicts of interests, they have drawn up a list of talking points to control the story.

This isn’t new. The media has shown a similar lack of interest toward investigating, and hostility towards those who are investigating, the origins of the Trump-Russia hoax. As the Ukraine story unfolded, Bill Barr was slammed for chasing “conspiracy theories” abroad by enlisting foreign countries in his review of the Russia probe.

In all of these controversies, journalists have shown reliable laziness in alluding, hazily, to “the facts” to dismiss politically damaging or inconvenient narratives. When journalists refer to “the facts” in the abstract, they aren’t referring to concrete fact patterns so much as invoking their sole authority to decide what it is and is not respectable to believe.

They really are begging the question: X is a conspiracy theory because the facts said so, and we journalists, the gatekeepers of the narrative, have exclusive authority to decide which “facts” are actually facts and which ones are “Republican talking points.” QED. So whenever Trump makes some damaging claim about a rival, it’s “without evidence.” But when somebody makes a damaging claim about Trump without evidence, it’s just true.

The Presumption of Right-Wing Guilt

In the mainstream media, any stories that originate on the Right are by definition positioned as batty and suspect—not for any reason of logic, but because they don’t jibe with the political sensibilities of what is called the “mainstream” media but is really a corporate leftist media. When press says that something is a conspiracy theory because Fox News is interested in it, they aren’t exactly saying it’s false. They’re making a value judgment, saying it’s the kind of thing that it is not acceptable or fashionable to admit in public that you believe, even if it’s reasonable to do so.

Note the two-pronged approach: first, the journalist adverts to “the facts,” without actually providing proof, to dismiss the damaging narrative out of hand. Then the narrative is positioned morally as suspect and as a “right-wing conspiracy theory.” Both techniques are really just a way for the media to assert its authority, a way of saying, “we journalists have decided this never happened, and anyone who thinks it did is crazy, uninformed, or racist.”

Mayer’s article is filled with signal words that are supposed to alert the reader of right-wing “disinformation.” The so-called mainstream media is imagined to be nonpartisan and “susceptible” to attack by shadowy right-wing actors. People who heard damaging stories about Clinton’s corruption in 2016 had been “misinformed.” The conservative media is an “echo chamber”—completely unlike the leftist of our media, of course—where calumny thrives. The once reputable Solomon discredited himself by working for mainstream right-of-center outlets like the Washington Times.

With the explosion of the Biden story into the mainstream, voters have been left in a “fog of suspicion and confusion” where it’s impossible to tell truth from fact, and—perish the thought—they have been presented with the possibility that Biden may not be such an upright guy after all; maybe he’s even as bad as Trump!

Disruption of the mainstream media narrative is imagined to be some kind of epistemological catastrophe, leaving voters with terminal political vertigo. The masses who are credulous enough to think that elite corruption (at least by a Clinton or a Biden) is a real thing have been victimized by “partisan” sources, and it’s the job of the Brave Journalists ™ at places like the New York Times to keep the story straight. Yet just by printing articles on the “conspiracy theory,” a newspaper with the “credibility” of the New York Times is validating tall tales.

The New York Times has shown plenty of editorial “responsibility,” if you take the term to mean a commitment to the narrative, facts be damned. The paper’s recent Kavanaugh debacle, coming as it did only weeks after launching the revisionist 1619 project, showed just how far the paper has devolved into a workshop for churning out pop-academic left-wing agitprop.

“Credibility” in blue-check-ese, is a signifier of political respectability, not factual correctness. Credible newspapers are so-called because they are “woke” and committed to the cause, no matter how divorced from reality they might actually be. By the same token, a conspiracy theory appears to be any story that might validate the grievances of the Right, if it were to be investigated with due diligence.

It’s absolutely crazy to ask people to think that Hunter Biden got a job with a Ukrainian oil company without his father pulling any strings. No reasonable person would dismiss the possibility. He got the job despite having no experience in the industry or in the region, to say nothing of his tabloid-worthy lifestyle, which got him kicked out of the Navy for cocaine use months beforehand? Despite all this baggage, he got an extremely lucrative do-nothing job in a notoriously corrupt country, and his dad didn’t help?

Protecting Their Own

To call anyone who sees signs of impropriety here a “conspiracy theorist” is simply obtuse. Or is the assumption that this kind of behavior is normal and expected from our elites—that it’s just something that everyone should casually accept as part of the business of politics, or at least banal when compared with the unique, metaphysical evils of Donald Drumpf? Many in the corporate leftist media seem to agree that Hunter’s business was untoward, even if it didn’t technically rise to the level of illegality. Then again, do we even know that’s true?

Did Biden have Shokin fired for corrupt reasons? Well, is Biden capable of corruption? The media seems to think not, as evinced by their shrugs at this obvious conflict of interest. But the answer is self-evident from the fact that his son was working for Burisma Holdings in the first place. If Biden’s story is a “worrisome” example of “legal corruption,” as even some liberal newspapers will concede, why the complete conviction that nothing more nefarious occurred below the obviously seedy surface?

The former vice president hasn’t gotten his story straight. He has said that he “never” spoke with his son about his business dealings, something that hasbeen contested by Hunter himself. Again, would any reasonable person believe that Biden never talked to Hunter about it? A photograph exists of the vice president and his son with a board member from Burisma Holdings, the company Biden never talked about with his son. Yet they were, golfing in the Hamptons the year Hunter Biden joined the company.

Common sense would suggest that it’s at least plausible to question whether Joe Biden engaged in political maneuvering on his son’s behalf. It’s not like it would be the first time, anyway. But the establishment press—a profession that used to operate on the adage, “if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out”—has decided that there’s nothing more to discover.

That’s the complete opposite of what “journalists” are supposed to pride themselves on doing. Here is clear evidence of pay-to-play dealing by one of our political elites, but the media is more interested in narrative gatekeeping—because Biden can’t possibly be as bad as Trump, right? Even if it’s possible, best to do whatever we can to dispense with the thought.

Ultimately, the media’s cynicism amounts to a defense of elite corruption itself. But given that the press is now part of that corrupted order, why shouldn’t the media be expected to protect it?

The Spygate Coup Exposed

Greg Rubini via threadreaderapp

1. imagine if at a dinner in Washington DC, in Oct 2016, you had:
- John Brennan, Director of the CIA
- Susan Rice, Obama's Nat. Security Adviser

together with Eric Ciaramella - the Adam Schiff 'whistleblower'...

2. imagine if at that dinner in Washington DC there were also:
- Joe Biden
- Nancy Pelosi
- John Kerry - Obama's Secretary of State
- Loretta Lynch - Obama's Attorney General

3. imagine if at that dinner in Washington DC there were also:
- John Podesta
- Tony Podesta
- Valerie Jarrett (obama's nanny)
- Samantha Powers
- Leonardo DiCaprio (???)

4. that dinner would be just a couple of weeks before the 2016 elections...

5. and yes, that dinner REALLY HAPPENED.

and John Brennan, Susan Rice were at that dinner together with Eric Ciaramella, the Adam Schiff 'whistleblower', and with Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden.

and all the others mentioned above.
. 

6. what does it tell you?

7. John Brennan, Susan Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden...

they all knew Eric Ciaramella, the Adam Schiff 'whistleblower'....

8. and no, the photo above is not of Eric Ciaramella.

it is a photo of Sean Misko - the "second whistleblower"

a dear colleague of Eric Ciaramella at the National Security Council,
just recruited by Adam Schiff, in Aug 2019

9. and this is the photo of Abigail Grace,
who worked at the National Security Council under both Obama and Trump,

she was also recruited by Adam Schiff, in February 2019

10. the question is:

Was the Adam Schiff “Whistleblower Operation” planned by John Brennan?

coordinated by Brennan with Susan Rice, Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff?

and using Eric Ciaramella, Sean Misko and Abigail Grace as Brennan tools?
. 

11. and guess what...

at that dinner in Washington DC, in Oct 2016, there were also the two James:
- James Clapper
- and James Comey

yes, that guy who has a "higher loyalty"...

12. by the way... Comey has a "higher loyalty"... to whom?

13. also Joe Biden and Diane Feinstein have a "higher loyalty".

yes, to Communist China

14. and guess WHO ELSE was at that dinner in Washington DC, in Oct 2016?

yes, the then Prime Minister of Italy - MATTEO RENZI - the Best Friend of Obama,
who helped Brennan and Comey to SPY on Trump.

15. this is Matteo Renzi

16. as you know, AG William Barr and prosecutor John Durham have been to Italy recently.

and they are going back there soon.

not just because they like PIZZA and SPAGHETTI all'amatriciana,
and Brunello di Montalcino...
. 

17. and guess who else was at that dinner in Washington DC, in Oct 2016?

Charles Kupchan - Special Assistant to President Obama
and Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council

Charles Kupchan was the BOSS of the whistleblower ERIC CIARAMELLA
. 

18. btw: yes, it was a lunch.
plausible deniability.
but now I can tell...

"official Luncheon in honor of Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi"
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
1:00 pm

19. The Italian Connection of Spygate is very important.

we still know little about it.
not just Mifsud, also Italian spy agencies involved.

that White House lunch on Oct 18, 2016 was a BIG "Thank You" to the Italian PM Matteo Renzi.
. 

New York Times Narrative Engineers Start Positioning DOJ/FBI “Small Group” Coup-Plotters as Victims of CIA and Intelligence Community Manipulation

The background context has already been outlined –SEE HERE– so we won’t repeat.  Instead, we look at today’s defensive narrative engineering from the New York Times with a similar perspective, but a different set of reminders.

Content and distribution tells us this information is from the DOJ and FBI faction of the “Small Group“.  Not accidentally, and VERY importantly, this is the same faction under the microscope of Inspector General Michael Horowitz and his pending IG report.  Additionally, and again very importantly, the principles within the IG report have already had an opportunity to review the part of the upcoming report that highlights their conduct.

So this New York Times reporting, from conversations with the DOJ and FBI small group participants, is coming out in advance of the IG report and with their review in mind.

Here’s the article, emphasis mine:

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors reviewing the origins of the Russia investigation have asked witnesses pointed questions about any anti-Trump bias among former F.B.I. officials who are frequent targets of President Trump and about the earliest steps they took in the Russia inquiry, according to former officials and other people familiar with the review.

[Note “prosecutors” is plural; more than one.  “prosecutors” also implies a shift from investigative review, to a likelihood of criminal conduct.  The media presentation of John Durham has gone from a single U.S. Attorney with a mandate from his boss, to a group of people, ‘prosecutors’, working with the U.S. Attorney.]

The prosecutors, led by John H. Durham, the United States attorney in Connecticut, have interviewed about two dozen former and current F.B.I. officials, the people said. Two former senior F.B.I. agents are assisting with the review, the people said.

[Two dozen former and current FBI officials questioned, but none of the individual within the small group have been questioned yet.  In addition to the prosecutors, Durham also has two FBI agents assisting.  Later in the article we discover a strong likelihood that one of those FBI agents is the leak source for the New York Times.]

The number of interviews shows that Mr. Durham’s review is further along than previously known. It has served as a political flash point since Attorney General William P. Barr revealed in the spring that he planned to scrutinize the beginnings of the Russia investigation, which Mr. Trump and his allies have attacked without evidence as a plot by law enforcement and intelligence officials to prevent him from winning the 2016 election.

[…] Mr. Durham has yet to interview all the F.B.I. officials who played key roles in opening the Russian investigation in the summer of 2016, the people familiar with the review said. He has not spoken with Peter Strzok, a former top counterintelligence official who opened the inquiry; the former director James B. Comey or his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe; or James A. Baker, then the bureau’s general counsel.

[So Mr. Durham has not questioned the “small group” participants. Ultimately this appears to be the reason for the nervousness now originating a defensive posture.]

Those omissions suggest Mr. Durham may be waiting until he has gathered all the facts before he asks to question the main decision makers in the Russia inquiry.

[Or it could be that those “main decision makers” are targets of the investigation.]

The president granted Mr. Barr sweeping powers for the review, though he did not open it as a criminal investigation. That means he gave Mr. Durham the power only to read materials the government had already gathered and to request voluntary interviews from witnesses, not to subpoenawitnesses or documents. It is not clear whether the status of the review has changed.

[Why would Mr. Barr need to “subpoena” pre-existing documents he has been granted full presidential authority to review?  Methinks the New York Times engineer is conflating the power of a special counsel (prior investigation) with the power of a U.S. Attorney General who was granted full access to any/all classified information by an executive order from the President of the United States.]

Mr. Durham’s investigators appeared focused at one point on Mr. Strzok, said one former official who was interviewed. Mr. Strzok opened the Russia inquiry in late July 2016 after receiving information from the Australian government that the Russians had offered damaging information on Hillary Clinton to a Trump campaign adviser. Mr. Durham’s team has asked about the events surrounding the Australian tip, some of the people familiar with the review said.

Mr. Durham’s team, including Nora R. Dannehy, a veteran prosecutor, has questioned witnesses about why Mr. Strzok both drafted and signed the paperwork opening the investigation, suggesting that was unusual for one person to take both steps. Mr. Strzok began the inquiry after consulting with F.B.I. leadership, former officials familiar with the episode said.

[“why” did FBI leadership allow Strzok to create, draft and open the investigation?  LOL, that’s actually a big tell.  Apparently Comey and McCabe were smart enough to keep their signatures off a political investigation.  It’s called plausible deniability.  Same purpose for James Comey keeping copious notes (diary) in his home safe.

Mr. Durham has also questioned why Mr. Strzok opened the case on a weekend, again suggesting that the step might have been out of the ordinary. Former officials said that Mr. McCabe had directed Mr. Strzok to travel immediately to London to interview the two Australian diplomats who had learned about the Russians’ offer to help the Trump campaign and that he was trying to ensure he took the necessary administrative steps first.

[“Two” = Alexander Downer and Erika Thompson.   May 10, 2016, Papadopoulos meets Ambassador Downer at the Kensington Wine Rooms in London, England. MEDIA CLAIM: “Downer met with George Papadopoulos, where Papadopoulos — having been introduced through two intermediaries, Christian Cantor and Erika Thompson — mentioned that Russians had material on Hillary Clinton.”  Both Papadopoulos and Downer refute their May 10th meeting discussed Clinton emails.  Papadopoulos notes that Ambassador Downer is recording their conversation.  {Go Deep}]

It is not clear how many people Mr. Durham’s team has interviewed outside of the F.B.I. His investigators have questioned officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence but apparently have yet to interview C.I.A. personnel, people familiar with the review said.

[So the leakers “people familiar” to the NYT are limited to knowledge inside the DOJ and FBI operational entities; just as we suspected.

[…]  Many of the questions from Mr. Durham’s team overlapped with ones that the Justice Department inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, has posed in his own look into aspects of the Russia inquiry, according to the people.

Mr. Horowitz’s report, which is most likely to be made public in the coming weeks, is expected to criticize law enforcement officials’ actionsin the Russia investigation. Mr. Horowitz’s findings could provide insights into why Mr. Barr thought that the Russia investigation needed to be examined.

[Well, there’s the motive for the current narrative engineering.  Horowitz’s report is coming out; small group participants will be criticized; and the justification for Barr and Durham to look at their behavior will be bolstered by IG Horowitz.]

In his review, Mr. Durham has asked witnesses about the role of Christopher Steele, a former intelligence official from Britain who was hired to research Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia by a firm that was in turn financed by Democrats. Law enforcement officials used some of the information Mr. Steele compiled into a now-infamous dossier to obtain a secret wiretap on a Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, whom they suspected was an agent of Russia.

[Interesting the NYT doesn’t write that Mr. Durham has interviewed Christopher Steele about his work on the dossier and his contact with the small group (he has).  One would think that would be an important notation in a paragraph about Mr. Steele, no?]

[…] Mr. Durham’s investigators asked why F.B.I. officials would use unsubstantiated or incorrect information in their application for a court order allowing the wiretap and seemed skeptical about why agents relied on Mr. Steele’s dossier.

The inspector general has also raised concerns that the F.B.I. inflated Mr. Steele’s value as an informant in order to obtain the wiretap on Mr. Page. Mr. Durham’s investigators have done the same, according to the people familiar with his review.

[Well, well, well, I answered by own question.  The NYT doesn’t want readers to know John Durham interviewed Steele, because the NYT is admitting the Steele information was “unsubstantiated”, “incorrect”, and the FBI “inflated” Mr. Steele to gain a political weapon.  Hmmm… methinks those exact words will be in the IG report; I digress.]

Mr. Horowitz has asked witnesses about an assessment of Mr. Steele that MI6, the British spy agency, provided to the F.B.I. after bureau officials received his dossier on Mr. Trump in September 2016. MI6 officials said Mr. Steele, a Russia expert, was honest and persistent but sometimes showed questionable judgment in pursuing targets that others viewed as a waste of time, two people familiar with the assessment said.

[That preceeding paragraph is just loaded with juicy stuff.  The NYT is sharing that MI6 told the FBI Steele was a sketchy fellow.  The NYT is positioning the dossier to the FBI in September 2016, but we know the dossier material was in Brennan’s briefing to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in August 2016…. So the NYT is positioning the FBI as a victim of bad intel from the dossier that was initiated by John Brennan. Very interesting.  Additionally, “two people familiar with the MI6 assessment” is confluent with two people who have read the IG report which will outline the MI6 assessment.  See how that works?]

One former official said that in his interview with Mr. Durham’s team, he pushed back on the notion that law enforcement and intelligence officials had plotted to thwart Mr. Trump’s candidacy..

[…]  The former official said he was reassured by the presence of John C. Eckenrode, one of the former senior F.B.I. agents assisting Mr. Durham. Like Mr. Durham, who investigated C.I.A. torture of detainees overseas, Mr. Eckenrode is also familiar with high-stakes political inquiries.

He is probably best known for working with Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the former United States attorney who in 2003 was appointed to investigate the leak of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame, to a journalist.

“Jack is as straight a shooter as you can get in the F.B.I.,” Asha Rangappa, a former F.B.I. agent, said of Mr. Eckenrode, a friend. “It’s the first reassuring thing I’ve heard about this review.”  (Read Full Article)

Oh good grief.  Asha “Comey is my Homey” Rangappa, likes one of Durham’s FBI investigators…. who also worked with corruptocrat Patrick Fitzgerald, one of James Comey’s corrupt friends who is now Comey’s corrupt lawyer.

Given that some of these NYT leaks come from inside Durham’s team, it’s likely John Eckenrode is the source.

Asha “Comey is my Homey” Rangappa (seated)

The key takeaway from this NYT article is the beginning of the public defense narrative for the DOJ/FBI small group.  They are starting to position themselves as victims of false information delivered to them by the CIA and Intelligence Community.

Apparently, this is the big picture defense they will use when the IG report drops.